What the Font: Web Design–Friendly Fonts

Web design tips

Safe web fonts, google fonts and using other fonts or typefaces

Have you ever come across a site online and as soon as you see the page, you feel like something is ‘off’ with the website design? The colours are okay, and there are great pictures. But for some reason, it does not make you want to read through the whole article.

A lot of times, the problem lies in the font used in the website design.

What are fonts for?

One of the biggest aspects in web design is the font or typography. As a beginner in web design, you might think your font choice is not big of a deal, but in reality it can make or break your website. Why? It is for the simple reason that text comprises majority of web design. Using fonts that will make your site look unpleasant and cluttered will just drive people away.

Why is the font choice important in web design?

Most web design experts are quite careful in selecting the appropriate fonts for a website. They take several things into consideration and choose the font that would best suit the website they are designing.

Here are some of the reasons why font choice is critical in web design.

First impressions are crucial.

People will not bother browsing through a website with articles that they can barely read. You don’t want a site that looks too haphazard and confusing because of too many different fonts used. If you want your audience to stay in your website and browse through your pages, choose readable fonts. Keep the variety of fonts to a minimum to make your website design look cleaner and more user friendly.

Fonts can create visual hierarchy

The font’s weight, size, and colour can significantly affect what your audience perceives. Most blogs use a bigger font for main article titles and bold fonts for certain keywords to draw in the readers’ attention.

Fonts give your web design its character

Font selection for your website design is vital in creating the site’s overall mood and character. The fonts should match the tone and purpose of your content. For example, if you are offering legal services, you wouldn’t want to use fonts that are too casual or funky. You would stick to more formal fonts that conveys professionalism.

Safe web fonts for your web design

A common problem with choosing the fonts that you want for your website design is compatibility. Some of them may not be readily accessible to your viewers. They might need to download or access your site from a remote server in order to see exactly what the web designer sees.

Because of this, most web designs stick to web-safe fonts which are compatible with most browsers. Sans Serif type fonts are the most commonly used for most web designs. Trebuchet, Verdana, Helvetica, and Arial are some examples of fonts that are quite readable on the web. You may also opt to use Serif fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia.

Unleash your creativity with Google Fonts

There are a lot of font hosting services that offer a myriad of premium quality fonts that you can use for web design such as Typekit, Webtype, or Fontdeck. However, if you want to use their fonts, you’ll need to shed a few bucks.

This is why many designers just opt for the more standard web safe fonts, limiting their creativity. Fortunately, Google Fonts (https://fonts.google.com/) came along and offered hundreds of different fonts with a variety of weight and styles – for absolutely no cost!

Not only that, finding the perfect font is made easier, even for beginner web designers, through its Google Font Browser feature. You can also customise your preview so that you can make sure that the font choice that suits your taste.

If you are using WordPress blog, you don’t have to edit CSS or embed HTML codes to your site. You can easily add Google Font by simply installing the plugin Easy Google Fonts. Some popular Google Web Fonts are: Open Sans, Droid Sans, PT Sans, Oswald, and Lato.

Jezweb can help you with your web design and web fonts

Choosing the right fonts for your website design can be a daunting task. It can be rewarding, however, especially when you find the ideal font combinations and styles that work best for your site. With all the different fonts and typography available to you, you can get creative when designing your site. Just remember to keep it clean, readable, and user-friendly.

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